Two of the country’s most powerful investors will appear in the Victorian Supreme Court on October 28 in the next stage of an unprecedented stoush over the ownership of Perth Airport.

AustralianSuper and the $89 billion Future Fund will appear in the Melbourne court late next month after the latter declined voluntarily to provide documents that the superannuation scheme says will help it to decide whether to sue the Future Fund over its purchase of a 30 per cent stake in Perth Airport for $875 million.

The material being sought by AustralianSuper includes management papers and board minutes, the implementation agreement between the Future Fund and Australian Infrastructure Fund – the seller of the airport stake – and “all documents evidencing or recording the manner or extent to which the Future Fund took into account the pre-emptive rights in allocating the purchase price to each of the assets" in the deal, the court application stated.

AustralianSuper, which is the country’s biggest industry super fund with $65 billion of assets, made the court application to force the Future Fund to hand over the documents on August 26. The retirement savings fund owns 5 per cent of the Western Australian asset and had been hoping to exercise its pre-emptive rights over the airport to raise its holding to 15 per cent.

AustralianSuper’s attempt to raise its stake was thwarted when the Future Fund ascribed a huge premium to the asset.

AustralianSuper argued that by applying a 43 per cent premium to the price of Perth Airport’s carrying value of June 2012, the terms of shareholder agreements related to the asset were breached.

It claimed that as a result of the price assigned to the airport, Australia’s ­biggest industry fund was deprived of its rights to increase its stake in Perth Airport, or had reduced the value of AustralianSuper’s pre-emptive rights.

The Future Fund has denied any wrongdoing since AustralianSuper first threatened legal action. It has insisted the transaction has been positive for AIF shareholders and co-investors in the airports.